The Paxos algorithm or how to win a Turing Award (part 1)

EN
/ Day 3
/ 10:00
/ Track 1

How to think about concurrent systems mathematically is explained using the Paxos consensus algorithm as an example. First, the problem to be solved is precisely specified. Then, a "shared memory" voting algorithm is specified and shown to implement the problem specification. Finally, the Paxos algorithm is specified and shown to implement the voting algorithm. How mathematical thinking is used in industry is then briefly discussed.

Leslie Lamport

Microsoft

Leslie B. Lamport is an American computer scientist. Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX. Leslie Lamport was the winner of the 2013 Turing Award for imposing clear, well-defined coherence on the seemingly chaotic behavior of distributed computing systems, in which several autonomous computers communicate with each other by passing messages. He devised important algorithms and developed formal modeling and verification protocols that improve the quality of real distributed systems. These contributions have resulted in improved correctness, performance, and reliability of computer systems.